


thunderbolt and lightning (very, very frightening!)

by shewon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Astraphobia, Brett Talbot is Liam's Bicon, Coming Out, Gen, Liam-centric, Mental Breakdown, Mirrors, Past Liam Dunbar/Hayden Romero, Scott is a Good Friend, Self-Destruction, Werewolf Biology, fear of storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 20:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15937583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewon/pseuds/shewon
Summary: Liam Dunbar is utterly embarrassed that on top of all the other things wrong with him, he has crippling astraphobia, fear of thunderstorms, that has only been amplified ever since he got the bite. It was common in dogs and humans, and he just so happened to be both.But he has help tonight. He has a bit of Scott with his scent, a bit of Brett with his voice, and a bit of Theo with his hugs. He can make it tonight.





	thunderbolt and lightning (very, very frightening!)

**Author's Note:**

> "Astraphobia, also known as astrapophobia, brontophobia, keraunophobia, or tonitrophobia is an abnormal fear of thunder and lightning, a type of specific phobia. It is a treatable phobia that both humans and animals can develop." - Wiki

  
  
Mason slams the locker door with an exasperated sigh and the smothering look of a parent as he eyeballs his best friend. Liam’s been out of touch with just about everything for the whole day, moving like he was in a state of hypnosis, and what type of brother from another mother would Mason be if he didn’t press him for answers?  
  
“What’s up with you?” He asks concisely.  
  
Liam looks taken aback, Mason scoffs, tempted to comment. Liam actually averts his eyes, and it’s the most nervous Liam has ever been when speaking to him. Once again, weird. “What do you mean?” He has the nerve to try to play it off.  
  
Mason rolls his eyes, “You’ve been acting weird all day... like, rickety.”

  
Liam had been teetering on and off the brink of insanity for the past five hours and he was drenched with a certainty of the situation, he just didn’t like it—and therefore didn’t speak of it.  
  
But Mason would press him, he definitely would. Still, he lies through his teeth, carding hands through his lengthened hair in attempts to distract himself just a little. “ _Rickety?_ ” He tries to divert from the topic.  
  
“Yeah, rickety... off your rockers, odd, strange, peculiar. I’ve got all the words down pat,” Mason momentarily purses his lips, “but you’ve got the answer to my question.”

  
“Nothing’s up with me.” Liam says the bold-face lie with a faux look of incredulity, trying to strengthen his garbage argument. His body was betraying him. All day he smelled wet moss seeping through the walls into the school from outside, he was constantly getting zapped by every metal object he laid hands on, and the heavy stench of dew and mud was swimming all around him. He was suffocating with every breath he took and it didn’t help that Mason wouldn’t just let him suffer in secrecy.  
  
Mason chortles sarcastically with a weak nod, “No, no, something’s definitely up with you,” he told him, diagnosing him. “You’ve been acting weird all day. Like, all day.”

At that moment, Liam feels his chest tighten.

  
They started walking to the nearest vending machine, neither of them really in the mood for mediocre-at-best, ass-at-worst cafeteria lunch. Liam partially didn’t want to eat because all the nature in the air and botanical pheromones were for sure going to make him vomit. He felt like he was on a reverse high. The bad hit him first before the good. It was not fun. His stomach churned and he felt his pancreas lodged in his throat. He was a goner for sure.  
  
Corey meets them both, and with one glance at Liam who’s trying to rub circles into his stomach discreetly, he can diagnose him as well—just way better. “You feel it too?” The chameleon then asks, with a sympathetic smile. He was definitely feeling the same amount of illness and anxiety as Liam—he could smell it—yet it seemed like he was keeping his head above water _—floating,_ even.  
  
“Feel what?” Mason inquires curiously, before viciously typing in the numbers for a baggie of tiny butterscotch cookies. The human was out of the loop.  
  
Corey winced, realizing he never really had to go over this with Mason in detail before. The weather in Beacon Hills was pretty consistent, though. It never occurred to him that this would really be a topic of discussion.  
  
So, the three high schoolers conversed about the weather.  
  
“You know how... when there’s a natural disaster coming, like a hurricane, the animals can sense it, and start freaking out or preparing for it?”

  
That was it. _That_ was Corey’s intro.

  
Mason blinks at his boyfriend, putting two and two together swiftly. “Is a hurricane gonna strike Beacon Hills? We’re not even a coastal town, how is that even—”

  
“I don’t think it’s a hurricane,” Corey supplies. “Check your phone. Weather app.”

  
So, Mason checks his phone, on the weather app, and scrolls through the hourly forecasts with the cute little emojis representing the severity. There was a cloud with three raindrops and a lightning bolt hovering over  5pm, 6pm, 7pm, and then a break period, before it started up again. Mason sucks his teeth, “Great—a thunderstorm,” he groans before turning back over to Liam, who has been silent, trying to munch on enough chips to push his pancreas back down to where it belongs. “Is that what’s been bothering you? Are you having, like, I dunno, symptoms?”

  
Liam nods. “It sucks, too. The air reeks of wet leaves, rainforests, and manure.”  
  
“Manure?” Mason wasn’t sure he heard that right.

 _“Soggy_ manure,” Corey corrects.  
  
“Glorious, isn’t it?” Liam huffs, rolling his eyes. “And after school, we’re holding tryouts, so I gotta assess the new meat.”

  
“Hello!” Some gutsy freshman girl snaps at the three who were just idly talking by the machine, “Y’all have been chit-chatting here for a while, don’t you think? Can a girl get a snack around here, or?”

  
They politely stepped over.  
  
“So, you’re nervous about the storm?” Mason asks for confirmation.  
  
Liam sighs, not knowing how to articulate. He wasn’t just nervous; he feared for his _life—_ but he definitely wasn’t gonna say that to them.

“No, I—it’s more than that, definitely more. It’s just another thing that’s way out of my realm of control and it’s literally making me sick... my anxiety levels are through the roof,” and just the very fact that he pointed it out and said it with his own mouth makes his heart rate quicken with fervor. He feels tears of embarrassment stinging at his eyes for a moment and he panics, shoving the remaining chips into Mason’s hand and booking it to the nearest bathroom.  
  
Liam washes the cheese dust off his fingers, then splashes his face. Even before he’d received the bite, he was always able to get this feeling of dread whenever he saw the clouds darken. It’s just that now he didn’t have to look at them to feel it.  
  
Ever since he was a child, Liam was afraid of booming thunder and hot lightning. It was natural. From his terrible twos to his first days in a real elementary school to the time he accidentally punched Hayden in her eye socket in middle school, there had been one fear that stuck with him—lightning and thunder; thunderstorms. **Astraphobia** , they called it. That was only one of the names; it was the easiest to spell and pronounce. When he never outgrew the fear at age twelve, his mom decided to seek out a professional. All he was told was that he should’ve outgrow it, unless he had some traumatic event that was chaining him to it—which he _didn’t._  
  
He should’ve outgrown it like all the other kids, the normal kids.  
  
When he was formally diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, that only made his growing anxiety worse. Now he had to worry about when and how bad he was spazzing out on people, and with anger came fear. His parents feared he’d be dangerous to himself or others, and he was too old to crawl into his parents’ bed whenever he felt afraid... so he started bottling his fears. He feared himself, he feared his strength, his emotions, and on top of all that self-hate, thunderbolts.  
  
The Universe really didn’t fuck with him, huh?  
  
His mind grazed over memories of panic attacks. There was a very vivid one from when he was six and wouldn’t let go of his mom—he wouldn’t even let her go to the bathroom or else he’d tantrum and break something. When he was eleven he went out to the arcade with some old friend, but it started thundering hard and they had to wait it out—he went to a secluded corner gritting his teeth trying to breath normally. When he was fourteen, there was a clear summer sky that started bellowing for no reason—he was on his bike, and the loud clang caught him off guard, and made him fall off. It paranoid him the most because there wasn’t a single drop of rain, but he still caught four lightning bolts’ afterimages in his mind.  
  
“Hey.” There’s a nudge, thankfully not a hand. He didn’t even realize he was shaking and taking irregular breaths until now. He looks over his shoulder and peeps Jake Reeves, his class president. “You good?” He seemed genuine.  
  
Liam couldn’t bring himself to speak, he knew he’d sound raw like he hadn’t spoken in weeks, so he just solemnly nodded.  
  
Jake took a paper towel out of the dispenser, wiping his hands. “You sure? You’re in my class, right? What’s your name?”  
  
Clearing his throat, he lies, “January.”  
  
“January? Unique.”  
  
He doesn’t know where that one came from, but he runs with it. “Uh, January… er, uh, Epps.”  
  
The class president is usually too busy organizing events to realize that Liam’s the captain of their school’s moneymaker sport. Or he’s just playing a game. Could be both?  
  
“January Epps…” Jake knows he’s bullshitting, but he plays along, “Take care of yourself, alright?”  
  
And that’s all he says before he leaves.

  
  
☂•☂•☂

  
  
Brett Talbot admittedly got a kick out of physically straining new recruits. That’s why after graduating Devenford, he still hung around his second school away from school; Beacon Hills High. It kind of always served as his playground of sorts, so when Liam reluctantly called him up to help select the best candidates for the JV and varsity lacrosse teams, he was all in.  
  
Now nineteen, he runs the newbies across the fields doing suicide runs and has them practice different techniques on each other... and when they complain, he makes them hold planks or do burpees till their legs fold like omelets and they scramble like eggs.  
  
It’s funny, and it makes them better players. Liam would know firsthand. Before Brett hated his guts when he banged up his ex-coach’s car, he was actually one of Brett’s top players out of the junior varsity division, he got expelled before he could get on their varsity team. Brett always praised him on a good game and always had a comforting habit of swinging his arm over  his shoulder, especially when he did good. Liam guesses that’s why he was so pissed when he did... the thing—he didn’t expect it out of Liam, IED or not. He saw it as an excuse and repeatedly called him out for it.  
  
Liam blinks up at the young adult standing before him. The sky was still clear as ever, but even Brett asks, “You feelin’ it, too?” He still spoke like a street-rat despite having Devenford etched onto his record.  
  
He tosses his mitts to the ground, sitting next to the younger on the bench.  
  
Brett then scoffs, “Clearly you’re letting it hold you. Why are you allowing nature to control you so much?” He inhaled. “You literally reek of uncertainty, like you don’t even know what you’re afraid of.”  
  
Welp, he just psychoanalyzed him.

He was still gonna get defensive though.  “Not everyone is one with the earth like you born types.”

  
“I never said I was,” Brett corrects; he couldn’t even pretend to deny the noxious odors in the air, “You’re assuming. I smell the soaked forest, dead animals, and lots of... _electrons_? You’re really not gonna let a thunderstorm grab a hold of you, are you, Mr. IED? Thought you were bigger than that,” he spoke.  
  
There he goes again, defining him by his behavioral disorder.  
  
Liam tugs at his bottom lip for a moment, remembering randomly that Brett dislikes that. “I am bigger than that.” He’s lying. The sky holds power over him and he knows it. Fuck. “I’m just tired.”  
  
“You liar!” Brett explodes with laughter, “I can’t believe you even tried that! What I need you to do is take a deep breath and count backwards from ten. You’ve still got a couple more hours before the clouds fuck us all over—make it count, and make some more team members,” he puts a helmet on his head, walking off. “From ten!”  
  
So he does.  
  
He lines all the players up, starting with that freshman girl from the vending machine. He recognizes her long curly ponytails poking out of her helmet. He glances down at his list, “Okay, uh, fuck.”  
  
“What’s up,” She greets, twirling the lacrosse stick.  
  
“Hi, there. January Epps.”  
  
She was from his AP World History class. Of course. How did he forget the only freshman in his class yet still manage to steal her identity?  
  
“I’m gon’ show you what I’ve got,” she states proudly, before readily swinging a ball at the goalie, and making a shot, clean.  
  
“You’ve got an accent. Where are you from?” He wants to know more about the identity he stole.  
  
“Maryland,” she slurs through her pink mouth guard. “Lacrosse is my state sport. I have to not suck. But you knew that.”  
  
So, January Epps clearly made the team.

  
  
☂•☂•☂

 

  
Now Liam is alone, at home, waiting for hell to rain down on him.  
  
He’d been stuck in his room, by his window, tightly gripping onto a piece of fabric, just pondering. This was the same young man who had jumped onto the back of a demon horse, not knowing how to ride one and confronted a mystical Ghost Rider. He is the same guy who resurrected another guy out of Hell. He shouldn’t be so jittery.  
  
He hadn’t seen Theo all day, despite him living in the Geyer household with him. It wasn’t like he locked himself in his room either, Liam checked, he literally wasn’t home. Theo had a habit of skipping school, since he was pissy that he had to repeat senior year and thought knew everything despite him missing an innumerable amount of days—maybe this is him dropping out—and he almost always ended up working some low wage job at a gas station or grocery store, or sometimes worse. Liam had seen him come home with slight evidence of bruises and cuts that took a bit more time to heal. He wouldn’t be surprised if he was apart of some paid underground fighting ring, a fight club, since that was when he brought home the most money, fully in cash, too. Still, the big home was cold without the chimera.  
  
Both of his parents were out doing 24-hour shifts. He wanted to complain about it, he really did, but he was too ashamed to think his childish phobia warranted his parents’ presence, while they’re out there doing services to the community and saving lives.  
  
That was when he saw it. The whole sky glowed momentarily as one thick, white bolt shot down in the distance. Liam’s mouth was agape as the light reflected off his green eyes, and his heart was thumping, louder than usual—and he had to calm himself or else he would actually hurt himself.  
  
He glanced up at the gray clouds, looking sad and heavy, and he knew that as soon as they cried, he would cry.  
  
Liam hates crying the most. It’s _stupid,_ it’s _uncomfortable,_ and it makes him look and feel _weak,_ regardless if he’s the only one to witness it. He feels like as soon as the first tear slides down, there’s a tattoo on his forehead saying ‘crybaby.’  
  
When the rain started pour, it was light at first, and Liam could deal—rain was just water. But the first clap of thunder came around, and it sounded like a drum line of godly wrath so he practically flipped out of his chair, closing his dark curtains with unmatched speed, and hopping into his bed.  
  
He brings the fabric close to his face and delves into the overwhelming scent of Scott McCall.  
  
The jersey served as his placebo.  
  
When Scott graduated, he offered it to him, since he understood the alpha-beta relationship clearly and how helpful it could be, especially in stressful situations. However, Liam rejected it at first, feeling guilty that Scott felt the need to do this. This was something he could hang up in his dorms and look at whenever he’d wanna reminisce on his high school years—Liam didn’t want to take this out of his hands. But Scott’s the king of insisting. So, he had no choice.  
  
_When Stiles caught the exchange he cracked jokes about it to Liam’s expense. No one else in the pack knew about the reason why; so they all hypothesized. “Aw, little Liam needs his alpha’s jersey? You’ll miss him that much?” He’d tease, then he’d say, “That’s cute. That’s real adorable.”  
  
Liam hated that everyone saw the exchange; it was at Scott’s sending-off/graduation party at his house.  
  
“Why’re you even giving him your jersey anyway?” Malia asked bluntly from his couch. “Don’t you need that? For memories and stuff?”  
  
_

_“You could make a time capsule, and put that inside, then  dig it up for your future son, y’know, or daughter,” Stiles had supplied, and Lydia nods in agreement. Liam deflated at that, realizing that now he was stealing from Scott’s future children.  
  
“I have enough memories burned into my brain from this place,” Scott said with a smile, “I doubt me missing a lacrosse jersey will erase all of them. And I have all of you, walking encyclopedias of supernatural events in Beacon Hills. I’ll be fine.”  
  
“So, what, it’s like a passing of the torch?” Stiles scoffed, not mockingly, just confused.  
  
“Liam already has his own jersey—” Mason had said, cup in hand.  
  
Liam, who had been silent the whole time, listening to the inadvertent shots being sent at him, explodes. “Maybe he just wants to give it to me! Crazy, right?”  
  
_ _He hated that he did that. So dramatic for no reason._  
  
No matter how much you’d try to wash the jersey, the alpha’s wolf scent of honeysuckle and bark had already been imprinted, and Liam was thankful for that. He was really glad that Scott’s pheromones helped keep him in balance, but it actually made him miss Scott a whole lot, too, and he knew he’d probably be sulky after all this.  
  
When the storm started getting severe, he felt his whole bed quaking, and he screamed into his pillow out of frustration.  
  
_“Liam, even if I’m not there physically, I’m here,” Scott had pointed at the jersey. “And you can always call. No matter how busy I am, call,” he uses his stern voice, almost commanding, because he knows that Liam won’t do it if he simply asks him and doesn’t instruct him to.  
  
Still, Liam defied him, muttering, “I’m not gonna call,” he paused, “I’m gonna give you your space. This is my problem, and your jersey... with this I won’t need much therapy.”  
  
“Fine; don’t call me if you don’t want to,” Scott huffs with a loose chuckle, “but just know that you can.”  
  
“Okay.”  
_  
_“I love you, man. Don’t ever forget that. Your problems are my problems.” The true alpha said with a radiating smile._ _  
_  
Liam was struggling to breath, he felt like he was drowning in his bed, and he was losing the fight. He started hyperventilating when his own heart wouldn’t cooperate with him, and he realized he couldn’t stay on the bed. So he sat on the floor, on his carpet  and tried to calm his breathing.  
  
With every sudden flash of light in the dark room, he’d count the seconds in between. Some were back from six seconds and others had a whole two minutes between them.  
  
He bets his mom is worried about him; and now he’s tempted to break everything breakable in his room out of pure frustration. He notices his claws forming and retracting repeatedly—his body doesn’t know what response it wants to give, fight or flight. The wolf in him wants to get violent, to do something to stop this noise.  
_  
_ So much noise.  
  
Even the raindrops were being amplified with his enhanced senses. He could smell them and hear them to the point of making his head hurt.  
  
He reaches for his phone, scrolling through anyone who isn’t in his pack because fuck no, he did not want them to hear him blubbering over the phone and getting worried about him and trying to baby him. He didn’t need a pacifier. He just needed a voice, a distraction.  
  
So when he saw the contact name of the pack-adjacent member, he remembers the deep, sultry voice and he presses the green call button immediately, before he can change his mind. He needed help.  
  
Buddhist help.  
  
“Well, this is new,” Brett states over the phone.  
  
Liam takes a breath before answering, “Hi,” and he would laugh at how defeated he sounds. He is such a loser; even when he wins, he loses. Constantly.  
  
He won supernatural werewolf abilities only to lose a fight with the clouds. It was some unlikeable, surreal shit.  
  
“Woah, what’s wrong with you?” The other wonders, genuinely concerned. “You sound gone.”

“I... I kinda am,” he admits before dancing around the question in his head. “Will you stay on the line with me, just for a bit?”  
  
“I can hear your heart trying to fight your ribcage... Yeah, I’ll stay on the line with you,” Brett’s voice does calm him. He’s the only one who doesn’t sound warbled on the phone. He sounds smooth. “Were you afraid I was gonna hang up on you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Liam admits with a nod and a dry laugh. “I was, not gonna lie.”  
  
“You called because…” Brett paused and educatedly guessed. “I see. I get it. You’re afraid of thunderstorms, aren’t you?”  
  
Liam inhales sharply, stuttering, “Wha—how did you know?”  
  
“I could sense the fear in you since you stepped on that field. I just couldn’t pinpoint it. The thought bounced around my head for awhile but I still couldn’t believe it. Just seems so unlike you, I guess,” you could hear the shrug in his voice. “When’d you get the bite?”  
  
“Freshman year; why?” Liam curled into himself when another rolling thunder sound overpowered the millions of raindrops smacking the ground.  
  
“What grade are you in now?”  
  
“Are you serious? I’m a junior.”  
  
“So you got the bite three years ago. You should’ve outgrown this then. Lori used to experience it during her first shift at thirteen, but she outgrew it.”  
  
“You sound just like... the fear scientist I went to.”  
  
“Fear scientist? Sounds like an oddly euphemistic version of the Dread Doctors.”  
  
“I don’t remember the actual title... She was some type of psychologist.” He murmurs.  
  
“Wait. How long have you had this phobia exactly?”  
  
Liam doesn’t know what lie to tell him, so he goes with the truth. “More than ten years, for sure.”  
  
“Liam, you’re like, sixteen. You’re tellin’ me this has been with you since _childhood?_ What about all the times we played in the rain at Devenford?”  
  
“Th-Those were just in the rain,” he defends, “They’d never let us play in something like this. It’s too risky.”  
  
“But you never talked to me about it.” Brett seemed disappointed. “Fuck.”  
  
Liam owes him nothing, he _knows_ this—if anything Brett owes him for the time he saved his life—but he still feels guilty. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t... Don’t be. Don’t apologize.” Brett tells him. You’d think he was an alpha. “Distract yourself. Tell me something I don’t know.”  
  
“Oh. Well, um,” Liam starts, rummaging through his mind for some interesting factoid he knew for no reason whatsoever. He settles for something else entirely. “I used to envy you.” He doesn’t know what possessed him to say that out loud.  
  
Brett bites his tongue, wanting to say something arrogant and cheeky. “Why?”  
  
“You... Your sexuality; you owned it. You didn’t let anyone tell you shit, so they couldn’t. Being the captain of one of the best lacrosse teams in California wasn’t even your main attribute, either. You didn’t let anybody else... tell you who you were.”  
  
“Yeah, when you’re bisexual, everyone else wants to tell you what you _actually_ are,” Brett scoffs. “You envied that?”  
  
“Sometimes gay kids would say you were gay and confused, and straight kids would say you’re straight and confused. Your name was always in someone’s mouth. I liked that... you never picked a side... you forced people to accept you, with your charm.”  
  
“Liam, you’re coming out to me.”

  
It was concrete; a fact.

“I guess I am. You can’t judge me, so it’s easy,” Liam says with an uncharacteristic cheeriness. “We’re one and the same. Me though, it took me ages to get comfortable with the name. Especially when I leaned more towards girls and still had no game whatsoever. I punched my first girlfriend in the face, and by some miracle she still got with me! I can’t imagine the type of brawl I’d get in with a possible boyfriend!”  
  
“So you really thought you were straight and confused,” Brett laughs. “It gets like that sometimes. You sometimes feel that way.”  
  
“I kind of knew for sure when, I dunno,” he pauses and gasps, the rain was calming down a bit, and he had successfully distracted himself. “When I joined the team, I guess, my totally no-homo admiration for you kind of... went homo.” He really doesn’t wanna know what type of demon possessed him to admit that.  
  
Brett snorts, indifferent to the revelation. Liam was quite easy to read. “You really do have no game whatsoever if that’s your way of saying you had a crush on me. That was terrible. You _went_ homo? Please, never again,” he snickers some more, still enjoying to tease Liam. The younger appreciates the fact that Brett refuses to coddle him under any circumstances.  
  
“Don’t worry, the crush died quick,” Liam adds sharply. “Who do you lean more towards? Girls or guys?” He had always been curious.  
  
“Me? I’m kind of even on both. The seniors at Devenford can tell you that.”  
  
Liam doesn’t know why he laughs at that, all giddy. “How Brett Talbot of you.”

“It sounds like you’re calling me a whore,” Brett accuses, chuckling. “Low blow, Dunbar.”  
  
“Hey, Brett, thanks for this—for just letting me talk.”  
  
“It was no problem. I learned a lot.” No kidding, he bared all his insecurities and praised Brett for being everything he was not. Brett sighs.  “If you need to talk again, you can call. I actually don’t mind.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t. You’re a dumbass, but not a nuisance. Difference.”  
  
“That was the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a long-ass time.”

 

☂•☂•☂

 

  
Liam manages to fall asleep only to wake up a few hours later in a cold sweat.  
  
The night is much brighter than it should be as lightning consecutively strikes the same area over and over. It’s not supposed to do that—now Liam’s sure he’s insane and hallucinating.  
  
He grips his sheets, noticing the shredded look and he glances at his hands wearily.  
  
“Shit, shit.” He pauses, looks again, and they’re still drawn. “Shit... shit. Shit.”  
  
He wipes the sweat off his forehead, and decides to walk over to the bathroom down his dark corridor.  
  
He passes the Theo’s room, the old guest room, and peeks his head inside only to see an untouched bed. He frowns.  
  
When he gets to the bathroom, he turns on the lights, glad that one of the bulbs were busted and it was dim enough to not pain his sensitive, yellow eyes.  
  
He looks at himself. He’s a beast; a big bad wolf, and he’s scared of a little lightning that hasn’t touched him once! He fears no man but he’s afraid of a little sound. It’s not like he’s a puppy, or a child. He’s grown. Grown enough.  
  
He’s too old for this shit. And he refuses to cry again. Crying was stupid.  
  
Out of pure frustration, he howls, punching his mirror, and leaving a red ring of blood over the cracked remains. He glances at the glass in his hand, and he’s tempted to leave them there so his hand heals around it, and it hurts more when he pulls them out.  
  
He heaves, feeling a bit more alleviated.  
  
It strikes him like a ton of bricks when he remembers how loudly he howled. Every wolf, supernatural or regular would hear that and try to respond, or possibly track him.  
  
He didn’t want to see a bunch of canines at his window asking who hurt him.  
  
He’s suddenly super glad Scott, Malia, Stiles, and the others were out of state.  
  
He hears his front door open slowly, so he creeps down the stairs carefully to investigate, holding his breath to keep absolutely silent. But, as life would have it, the sky bangs dramatically and the boy yelps, nearly falling down the staircase. So much for agility. This would’ve been worse than the time he fell in a hole.  
  
What he’s met with is Theo Raeken.  
  
“Are you okay?” He deadpanned.  
  
Liam is honest when he says, “Nah.”  
  
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The drenched boy replies, trying to read the other’s body language. “What happened to your hand?” He grabs it before Liam can try to hide it, carefully picking out shards of glass. “What happened to it?”  
  
Liam lowered his head. “It’s almost 12am, why are you just now getting back?”  
  
Theo digs into his jacket pocket, pulling out a fat stack of cash and tossing it on the nearest table with a thunk. “Getting this... and I don’t like my questions being answered with more questions.”  
  
The rain got heavier, and outside was becoming a blur altogether. Liam could smell burnt wood and knew for a fact a tree just got shocked. The fact that it was within his range put him on edge. “You shouldn’t have been out there. I know you’re getting money from this bootlegged fight club but it’s not worth all this. You smell like sea salt and puddle and sweat.”  
  
“Then I’ll take off the jacket,” he peels it off, picking out the last glass shard from Liam’s hand and watching as it heals. “Calm down.” He says out of nowhere.  
  
“What?”

“Calm down. Why’re you so nervous? Your heart’s literally jumping at me.”  
  
Liam won’t cry. Big kids don’t cry.  
  
His eyes start fluctuating again between human and canine, and his ears start ringing because it feels like a sensory overload. The loudness from the weather feels like someone’s bludgeoning his head with a hammer in sync with every droplet.  
  
He tries to explain himself, but he can only open and close his mouth like a fish, choking on the truth. “I, uh– I, it’s loud—” His hands cover his reddened ears.  
  
“The storm,” Theo states. “Liam.”

  
Theo pieces the puzzle together quickly, and embraces the younger for no reason in particular. He didn’t exactly know why, but that’s what his gut told him to do.  
  
He can feel the other stiffen awkwardly for a moment before relaxing, wrapping arms tightly around him.

  
Then his claws dug into his hips. 

It’s like you’d have to pry him off.

  
Theo groaned a little at the sharp stabs, but chalked it up to instinct.  
  
“You smell good.” Liam finally said out of the blue.

  
“I do? I thought I smelled like puddle.” Theo chuckles, he could feel blood staining the hem of his shirt.

“You—” more thunder, Liam squeezed tighter; so did Theo, “You still do. Just that now I can smell _you_ too. That was the scent of the rain. Your scent is like raspberries.”  
  
Theo chuckles, loosening only to lead them to a more comfortable position on the couch. “Raspberries? Never heard that one before.”  
  
“Could’ve said much worse,” Liam rests on top of him, noticing the blood on his shirt despite the darkness.  “Sorry,” he looks at his guilty, bloodstained claws. “I, uh, my bad,” he smiles apologetically.

“It’s whatever,” Theo pulls up his shirt, messily wiping blood to the side, “Look, it healed.”  
  
Liam holds him, drowning the scent of Theo. He secures him in his arms and every time Liam tenses at sounds outside, Theo rubs circles into his back.  
  
“You never told me you were afraid of thunderstorms.”  
  
Liam shuts his eyes, retorting, “You never asked. It wasn’t important.”  
  
“It is,” Theo corrects. “Anything else I should know?”

“No.” Liam says too quickly before demanding, “Just stay like this.”  
  
“You know you can tell me—I’m the last person you should fear getting judged by, especially with all the stuff I’ve done,” the hell survivor speaks. “Shoot, little wolf.”  
  
“You’re my anchor.” He offers.  
  
Theo is a bit surprised. He was always so sure that it would be Hayden or a family member, but he guesses it switched over time. Huh. They were mutual anchors. Beautiful.  
  
“What is?” Liam says curiously.  
  
He had said it out loud. Whoops. He usually doesn’t slip up like that.  
  
Still, in the dark, Liam could tell that he was smiling which only made him smile as well.

“You’re my anchor, too.”

 


End file.
